Bella Donna Part 109

"Yes."

"When we first heard it, I was so strong, so happy--strong to protect you, happy to have you to protect, and--and it's ended in your having to protect and take care of me."

She moved.

"Yes," she said again, in a dry voice.

"I--I think I'm glad we can't look into the future. One wants a lot of courage in life."

She said nothing.

"But I feel a little courage now. I never quite told you how it was with me on the _Loulia_. If I had stayed on her much longer, as we were, I should have died. I should have died very soon."

"No, no, Nigel."

"Yes, I should. But here"--he moved, stretched out his arms, sighed--"I feel that I shall get better, perhaps get well, even. How--how splendid if I do!"

"Well, I must go and look after things," she said.

"You're tired, aren't you?"

"No. Why should you think so?"

"Your voice sounds tired."

"It isn't that."

"What is it?"

"You know that for your sake I am enduring a companionship that is odious to me," she said, in a low voice.

At that moment, Meyer Isaacson came into the room.

"We must get the patient to bed as soon as possible," he said, in his quiet, practical, and strong voice.

"I'll go and see about the room," said Mrs. Armine.

She went away quickly.

When she got upstairs there were drops of blood on her lower lip.

XLI

Nigel had come to hate the _Loulia_. They had no further need of her, and he begged his wife to telegraph to Baroudi in his name to take her away as soon as he liked.

"Ibrahim has his address, I know," he said.

The telegram was sent. In reply came one from Baroudi taking over the _Loulia_. The same day the Reis came up to the villa to receive backsheesh and to say farewell. He made no remark as to his own and his crew's immediate destiny, but soon after he had gone the _Loulia_ untied, crossed the Nile, and was tied up again nearly opposite to the garden against the western bank. And in the evening the sailors could be heard in the distance "making the fantasia."

Mrs. Armine heard them as she walked alone in the garden close to the promontory, and she saw the blue light at the mast-head. The cabin windows were dark.

So this was the end of their voyage to the South!

She stood still near the wall of earth which divided the garden from the partially waste and partially cultivated ground which lay beyond it.

She had not thought that they would come back--there.

This was the end of their voyage. But what was to be the end?

Baroudi made no sign. He had never written to her one word. She had never dared to write to him. He had not told her to write, and that meant he did not choose her to write. She was very much afraid of him, and her fear of him was part of the terrible fascination he held to govern her. She who had had so many slaves when she was young ended thus--in being herself a slave.

She sat down by the earth wall on the first stones of the promontory.

The night was moonless; but in the clear nights of Egypt, even without the moon very near details can often be distinguished.

To the right of Mrs. Armine the brown earth bank shelved steeply to a sh.o.r.e that was like a sandy beach which an incoming tide had nearly covered. About it, in a sort of large basin of loose sand and earth, grew a quant.i.ty of bushes forming a not dense scrub. She had never been down to walk upon the sandy sh.o.r.e, though she had often descended to get into the felucca. But to-night, after sitting still for some time, she went down, and began to pace upon the sand close to the water's edge.

From here she could not see the house with its lighted windows, speaking to her of the life in which she was involved. She could see nothing except the darkness of the great river, the dark outline of the promontory, and of the top of the bank where the garden began, the dark and confused forms of the bushes tangled together. At her feet the silent water lay, like lake water almost, though farther out the current was strong.

"What am I going to do?" she kept on saying to herself, as she walked to and fro in this solitude. "What am I going to do?"

It was a strange thing, perhaps, that even at this moment Baroudi, the man at a distance, frightened her more than Isaacson, the man who was near. She did not know what either was going to do. She was the prey of a double uncertainty. Isaacson, she supposed, would bring her husband back to health, unless even now she found means to get rid of him. And Baroudi, what would he do? She looked across the river and saw the blue light. Why was the _Loulia_ tied up there? Was Baroudi coming up to join her?

If he did come! She walked faster, quite unconscious that she had quickened her pace. If he did come she felt now that she could no longer be obedient. She would have to see him, have to force him to come out from his deep mystery of the Eastern mind and take notice of what she was feeling. His magnificent selfishness had dominated hers. But she was becoming desperate. The thought of her wrecked beauty haunted her always, though she was perpetually thrusting it away from her. She was resolved to think that there was very little change in her appearance, and that such change as there was would only be temporary. A little, only a little of what she wanted, and surely the Indian summer would return.

And then, she thought of Meyer Isaacson up there in the house close to her, with his horribly acute eyes that proclaimed his horribly acute brain. That man could be pitiless, but not to Nigel. And could he ever be pitiless to her without being pitiless to Nigel?

She looked at the water, and now stood still.

If Baroudi were on board the _Loulia_ to-night, she would get a boat and go to him--would not she?--and say she could not stand her life any longer, that she must be with him. She would let him treat her as he chose. Thinking of Nigel's kindness at this moment she actually longed for cruelty from Baroudi.

But she must be with him.

If she could only be with Baroudi anywhere, anyhow, she would throw the memory of this hateful life with Nigel away for ever. She would never give Nigel another thought. There would be no time to waste over that.

"But what am I going to do? What am I going to do?"

That sentence came back to her mind. Flights of the imagination were useless. It was no use now to give the reins to imagination.

Baroudi must come up the river. He must be coming up, or the _Loulia_ would surely not be tied up against the western sh.o.r.e. But perhaps she was there only for the night. Perhaps she would sail on the morrow.

Mrs. Armine felt that if the next morning the _Loulia_ was gone she would be unable to remain in Luxor. She would have to take the train and go. Where? Anywhere! To Cairo. She could make some excuse; that she must get some clothes, mourning for Harwich. That would do. She would say she was going only for a couple of days. Nigel would let her go. And Meyer Isaacson?

What he wished and what he meant in regard to her Mrs. Armine did not know. And just at this moment she scarcely cared. The return to the villa and the departure of the _Loulia_ seemed to have fanned the fire within her. While she was on the _Loulia_, in an enclosed place, rather like a beautiful prison, she had succeeded in concentrating herself to a certain extent on matters in hand. She had had frightful hours of ennui and almost of despair, but she had got through them somehow. And she had been in command.